Bangalore, March 15, 2013: India-headquartered global leader in Embedded Software and in Digital Signal Processing (DSP) based applications in Multimedia and Communications -- Ittiam Systems -- is among the very first off the block with a Video Encoder and Decoder for the recently ratified next generation High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard (see tech note at end of this story) .
Ittiam’s HEVC Encoder is a software implementation on Intel x86 based platforms, capable of High Definition (HD) broadcast quality video encoding with up to 50% compression gains over H.264 based encoders. This constitutes a large improvement in compression ratio and will enable Broadcasters and Over-The-Top (OTT) television service providers to realize higher capacity in transmission of HD as well as UltraHD (4Kx2K) content at lower bitrates.
The solutions were showcased at leading shows like the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and will also be seen next month at the NAB 2013 show in Vegas
Select customers and partners across North America, Europe and Asia have had the opportunity to sample these software solutions under license in recent months.
The Ittiam HEVC Decoder software for the ARM Cortexfamily – systems-on-a-chip can be expected to fuel a wide range of devices like Smartphones, Tablets, Smart TVs and Set-Top Boxes to play back High Definition (HD) HEVC content.

Says Shantanu Jha, Ittiam Vice President in charge of its Media Processing Business : "HEVC (H.265) represents a significant transition point in the Digital Media market. Content creators, broadcasters, OTT providers, network operators and consumers alike, will benefit from the compression and quality gains that HEVC offers. We expect the increasing demands of online media delivery to multiple screens and increasing video resolutions to rapidly drive HEVC adoption. This is evinced by the strong interest in early evaluations and licensing of Ittiam's HEVC software solutions".

Adds Ittiam CTO Sriram Sethuraman: "The compression and quality advantages of HEVC are accompanied by significantly higher computational complexity on the encoding side. We are pleased to offer software solutions for both HEVC encoding and decoding, leveraging our expertise and long experience with video compression algorithms, processor architectures, and video software optimization techniques. We continue to track further developments and newer profiles of the HEVC standard and will also be offering additional optimizations, such as OpenCL based GPU acceleration, as part of our HEVC roadmap."

Ittiam Systems is headquartered in Bangalore, India and is singularly focused on embedded media centric systems. Its customers include Fortune 100 companies and are distributed across U.S., Europe, Japan and Asia. Since 2004 the company has been consistently rated as the "World's Most Preferred DSP IP Supplier" in the annual surveys conducted by Forward Concepts Incorporated.

Tech note: HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) or also called H.265 is the next generation Video compression standard is currently being standardized and is said to be ratified in Jan 2013. HEVC promises up to 50% gains over H.264 with the same or better visual quality. However, gains come at the higher encoding and decoding complexity of the algorithms in the standard. With the encoding processes significantly higher in complexity than the decoding process. See standard details here